It’s neither Disney’s first Star Wars nor 2001 for beginners, but The Black Hole merits exploration
Film Lists black hole
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Voyagers now in theaters and Stowaway on Netflix next week, we’re looking to the stars for five days of space movies.
The Black Hole (1979)
There’s a simple explanation for how The Black Hole came to be: Star Wars. George Lucas’ space opera had completely upended the entertainment industry in the late 1970s, and everyone from James Bond to ABC wanted in on the star-cruising, laser-blasting action. This included former Los Angeles Rams tight end and Walt Disney son-in-law Ron W. Miller, who was on a campaign to break the family business out of its reputation as a purveyor of all-ages entertainment and all-ages entertainment alone. Naturally, this plan included a science-fiction picture with state-of-the-art special effects, colossal starships, merchandisable robots, and Disney’s first-ever PG rating.
And yet two of those Black Hole automatons still wound up with great big, googly cartoon eyes—and one of them lets off a couple of reactions that wouldn’t look out of place in a Goofy short. The Walt Disney Company could not escape the trends that were threatening to leave the studio in the dust, and The Black Hole could not escape the gravity of The Walt Disney Company. Such tensions make for fascinating viewing all these years later: It’s science-fiction eye candy with philosophical pretensions and a climax harkening back to its origins as an intergalactic disaster movie, executed under the aegis of people who had no real experience with any of the above. The closest thing to The Black Hole in Miller’s production portfolio were the Witch Mountain movies; the director and screenwriting team were largely TV veterans. Despite a cast that boasts Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster, and Ernest Borgnine, the star performances in The Black Hole are all on the technical side—in its awe-inspiring matte work and intricate spaceship miniatures.
When the research vessel Palomino happens upon the seemingly derelict U.S.S. Cygnus at the edge of a black hole, they haven’t so much arrived in an ersatz galaxy far, far away as a charmingly naïve approximation of the decade of sci-fi cinema that preceded them. At heart, The Black Hole is a gateway drug to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running, right down to its bald attempts at smuggling in some highfalutin quotations and psychedelic imagery alongside gee-whiz stuff like Maximilian, the crimson killbot with the spinning knife hands. If The Black Hole mimics Star Wars in any capacity beyond the armor and capes in its costume designs, it’s in the wild range of reference points it rockets into the heavens. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea provides a basic framework and a model for the Cygnus’ mad commander, Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Schell); writing about the film for The A.V. Club in 2014, Jason Heller argued that “[j]ust as Star Wars works better as fantasy as than as science fiction, so does The Black Hole work better as another genre entirely—in this case, gothic horror.” Forget the infamously spiritual turn of its finale, the Renfield-like thrall Reinhardt casts over the Palomino’s senior science officer Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins), or the just deserts awaiting several of its space jockeys. The film could earn its gothic bona fides solely on the basis of the candelabras, crystal chandelier, and red drapery of the ornate dining room in which Reinhardt informs his guests of his intent to travel into the black hole.
The Black Hole is a product of aesthetic and environment. There’s an arresting vastness to both its starfields and the interiors of the Cygnus: the seemingly infinite corridors, the glittering panels, and unexplained planetary models attended to by hooded silhouettes in a cavernous control room. The film is never better than when its protagonists are wandering around the Cygnus, puzzling over the unoccupied dormitories and the strange rituals of the AI who serve under Reinhardt. When it’s not passing exposition to Ernest Borgnine or running cross stitch aphorisms through the vocal processor of robot sidekick V.I.N.CENT (Roddy McDowall), there’s something alluringly unknowable about The Black Hole—all the better to contrast Reinhardt’s megalomaniacal desire to learn the secrets of the universe at all costs. Such a spirit of inquiry is the best way of approaching The Black Hole, too. Perhaps it’s so adept at projecting the eerie emptiness of an ever-expanding void because the film, too, has a hollowness of characterization and plot. But it remains worth seeking out, if not for its misguided ambition (70mm prints got a stentorian overture from John Barry) then for its time capsule qualities (repeat: 70mm prints got a stentorian overture from John Barry).
Looking out from a point in history in which Disney is so powerful, calculating, and deep-pocketed that, rather than competing with Star Wars, it just up and bought the thing, it’s refreshing to watch something as chintzy and idiosyncratic as The Black Hole. As Miller ascended through the corporate ranks—realizing his vision of a studio arm for more sophisticated, mature fare just before he was ousted in favor of Michael Eisner—Disney continued dabbling in genres outside its comfort zones. It was a period marked by subsequent live-action odd ducks like Tron, Watcher In The Woods, and Return To Oz—movies that, ironically, didn’t draw the types of audiences that Touchstone Pictures like Splash, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Good Morning, Vietnam would, but did sear themselves onto the subconscious of the kids exposed to them in the theater or on VHS and the Disney Channel. If today’s precision tooled Disney releases are the sleek Maximilian, then The Black Hole is B.O.B. (Slim Pickens): an older model that’s a little banged up, but useful in a pinch, and still hanging around in case you’re not in the mood for The Empire Strikes Back.
Availability: The Black Hole is currently streaming (with that aforementioned overture) on Disney+. It’s also available to rent or purchase digitally from Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, Microsoft, DirecTV, and VUDU.
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Fun Fact: The original title for The Black Hole was BOB and Some Boring Crap
When you put The Black Hole up against 20001, Zardoz and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, tell me, which was the least boring?
Zardoz. {pause}Unless you were having a bad trip.{pause}Then Zardoz.
Wizard of OzZardozZOZ(the last one I made up, though someone should make a movie called that that’s even trippier than the previous two)
All of those movies are slow, which is why I assume they are regarded as “boring”. So for me the question is which one’s central mystery is most compelling? That’s clearly TMP, in my opinion. “What is this giant thing and why is it coming to destroy Earth?” beats “What happened to the crew of this ship?”, “Where did this noisy rock come from?”, and “When will the immortal people give Zed clothes?”.
(For record, of course 2001 is the best film on that list)
I haven’t seen Zardoz, but I vote TBH. I saw 2001 when I was 9(!), and while I was overwhelmed I was certainly not bored. TMP at least has that terrific, scary opening scene.
I can’t begin to tell you how deeply screwed up that ending left a 6-year old me when this came out. The bad guy literally IN HELL encased in the body of the killer robot he created.
Even my adult re-watching messed me up.
Yup – Same.
Man, it didn’t even take that long. When Maximillian shreds through that book and into Anthony Perkins…
That bit with Perkins’s tongue waggling was pure nightmare fuel for me.
I watched that same video yesterday to relive the horror.
That FUCKED ME UP.
Sure, but the merchandising options are endless.
They didn’t turn out to be that profitable. I ended up with a nearly complete set of The Black Hole figures (including Maximilian) because like six months after they came out you could get them for 50 cents a piece at KayBees. I wonder if they are still in my parents’ basement.
There was never a yardsale that escaped my grandfather’s notice, and amongst the piles of discarded toys he would scoop up for us, I think Black Hole merchandise was still showing up well into the mid 80s. Doesn’t seem to have been the licensing bonanza Disney probably hoped for.
I built the gigantic (over 2′ long) Cygnus plastic model, which was also fairly cheap, but gorgeous, and later made an iconic prop for a tabletop RPG I was running.
I had models of both the main robots.
It seriously messed me up. I think watching the villain die under a collapsed pile of debris was the first time I considered my own mortality.
Sone of us thought that reveal was that Mimieux’s father – who the movie kept mystery-ing – was Maximillian. Makes about as much sense, anyway. Watching it more recently one of the big differences from how I received it when I was 5 or so was that V.I.N.CENT is un fucking bearable.
McDowell was a master at playing the unctuous asshole. He should have played more villains, but I think producers couldn’t get past his years as a child star.
He was pretty damn prolific, so he did a few. Check out the 1967 film It!, which is sort of like Willard, but with the folkloric Golem instead of rats.
I was 7 and had nightmares about Maximillian ripping into Anthony Perkins.
Well if Disney ever remakes it, I hope when Reinhardt merges with Maximilian in Hell, we end up with a live-action version of this guy:
Exactly! Both this and Watership Down are two movies that a way too young “me” shouldn’t have seen at the time…classic nightmare fuel. I do however have a super soft spot these days for TBH though. Although a bit repetitive, the score is overpowering in all the right ways for me. The “science” is almost all laughably bad but somehow in a “cute” way for me. And despite the cold, detatched direction, I do find myself liking main characters while appropriately being creeped out at the villains. It would never hit the same sweet spots for me today if I saw it for the first time but, nightmares aside, I’m actually kind of glad I saw this when I did.
Exactly! Both this and Watership Down are two movies that a way too young “me” shouldn’t have seen at the time…classic nightmare fuel. I do however have a super soft spot these days for TBH though. Although a bit repetitive, the
score is overpowering in all the right ways for me. The “science” is
almost all laughably bad but somehow in a “cute” way for me. And despite the cold, detatched direction, I do find myself liking
main characters while appropriately being creeped out at the villains.
It would never hit the same sweet spots for me today if I saw it for the
first time but, nightmares aside, I’m actually kind of glad I saw this
when I did.
Ditto. Definitely the Disney production that disturbed me the most as a child.
I saw it on TV when I was about 4 with that ending excised. I didn’t see the real hell ending until my 30s and it blew what was left of my hair right off my head.
The print seized in the projector at the theater I saw it at. Have you ever seen a film melt and bubble in the projector? Well, imagine it that it happened as Maximilian descended from above.I’m STILL not sure if that desensitized me, or reinforced the horror.
Fun Fact: This movie sucks.
Kinda, yup, it does. The acting and costumes, in particular, I just remember being…bad.
For real, it’s *extremely* boring, and the attempts at humor are lame at best. It’s one of those that seems interesting now, years after you saw it, but if you watched it again now, you’d fall asleep 30 minutes in.
I made it through last time because my wife kept nudging me awake.
“zzz-huh, wha…did the robot kill the dude?!”
Did at the time, too. I was 10. It was cool-looking on the big screen though.
It does not suck. At all.
This was the first movie I saw as a kid where I thought it sucked and felt weakly pandered to.
I was certainly disappointed, but the real “wow, some movies suck!” moment for me was Superman 3.
It doesn’t suck. It’s got some great production design, mainly the Cygnus model and its interior sets/matte paintings. It’s also got some fun ideas (mad scientist on a lost, cavernous spaceship attended to by silent robed drones and a glowering angular robothug).What it doesn’t have is enough internal logic (why is the Cygnus a mile long if you can explore space with something tiny like the Palomino? Why are the interiors so big and empty? What the actual F is that ending?), tonal consistency (those fucking googly-eyed robots, and the shift from haunted house to lame action) or plot to sustain itself. If the plot and the aesthetics had been boiled down to the proper size it would have made a good episode of The Outer Limits or something.
you needed to see the film to understand the references in the MAD Magazine spoof. It was a tradeoff we did back then.
Dear Disney,Don’t ever remake this. But if you do, please cast Jason Mantzoukas as Reinhardt.Thanks, -Frank
I prefer studios to remake the bad movies to make them better than the other way around. Still, this wasn’t a terrible movie. It was just a movie that never became what it wanted to be.
Yeah, I was really hoping that that the 2017 remake of Flatliners (the 1990 Kiefer Sutherland movie) would improve the frankly wasted potential of the original, but it was just as bad if not worse.
It was remade as Event Horizon.
Tom Hanks! Dammit, I will see him play a villain at least once before he calls it a career (And yes I’m aware of Cloud Atlas).
Man, I loved this movie as a kid. I haven’t watched it in at least 35 years. I’m kind of afraid I might ruin my memories of it. I vividly remember listening to the record of it a couple years after it came out, and it might of had a read along book with it.
I’ve revisited it a couple of times in the past few years and it retained entertainment value for me.
I returned to it recently, fearing my childhood memories wouldn’t hold up, but I really had a good time with it.
Oh I know, isn’t that the worst when it happens? The last year I revisited a lot of old films, and it was a bummer when ones I adored as a kid turned out to not be that good. And then it’s so wonderful when a film does stand the test of time. I saw ET for the first time in easily 25 years, and that movie fucking holds up.
Same. This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. I realized it wasn’t SW quality, but it was so messed up that I bonded to it. For a 9 yr old, the philosophical stuff seemed deep. I rewatched it where ever I could until I aged out, and by then even SW had ewoks.I love the transitional era of Disney. It was my 70s childhood. Pre-corporate takeover of reality, more heart than budget. Everyone was lost then, and ambivilence had a kind of grace to it.
I watched it with my kids, and it was a good time for everyone, especially as a change up to normal kids entertainment.
I re-watched it this past year – it’s pretty fascinating, if a bit too long. FX are still mind-blowing in places. I think a remake would suit the story pretty well. And the mid-movie reveal about the Cygnus crew is creepy as fuck (I had forgotten about that twist).
This movie I think is a little more ambitious and successful than the Buck Rogers TV series, a little less so than the Space 1999 series
(70mm prints got a stentorian overture from John Barry) then for its time capsule qualities (repeat: 70mm prints got a stentorian overture from John Barry). Ba Ba Ba, Baaa Ba Ba Ba That score has stuck with me for 40 plus years.
The score for this is amazing, and it’s John Barry at his best. The film’s worth watching just for the music alone.
I suggest On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is John Barry’s best work but I won’t quibble. I would also argue that John William’s score for Star Wars make the movie and without it there would not be a franchise.
Yes, it’s lifting a lot from Holst’s “Saturn”, but it really lifts it.
I give John Barry a hard time because he’s like James Horner, if James Horner was 30 years older and on sedatives. On the plus side, you can always tell a John Barry score.That said, the part when the Palomino discovers the Cygnus floating on the event horizon, blacked out and drifting, with Barry’s score lingering in the background, might be the perfect expression of foreboding – certainly a departure from anything Disney had ever done to that point.
What’s wrong with James Horner? His ST II score is a masterpiece.
Nothing wrong with him – his scores were great and memorable. It’s just that once you discover how many times he recycles musical elements across multiple scores (sometimes verbatim), you can never listen to them the same way again.
I remember a watch party at my friend’s house, somewhere around age 8. He was the friend with Disney Channel and the mom who liked to throw little parties for no particular reason. She was lovely; the dad was a nightmare – so much screaming.That’s all that I remember about this movie, except for same vague recollections of black hole animated effects and robots. Not sure if it was too scary or too boring to hold my interest.
While I actually liked both… is it weird that as a child I loved the novelization of this far more than the movie itself? The endings weren’t the same, as I recall – but both kind of messed me up in their own way.
Was that Alan Dean Foster? (What am I saying, of course it was.) Yeah, it was better.
The ending of the book messed me the hell up, even more than watching Anthony Perkins get shredded.But it still wasn’t as existentially horrifying for young me as when they pulled the mask off of the “robot” near the end and exposed the crewman’s face.I’m half a century old now and I still can’t watch that part of the movie without cringing.
Ah, one of the relics of Disney’s disastrous “Fuck You, Children!” era. When 7 year old me saw this, I sat through it all: Borgnine abandoning everyone and running away, Maximillian slowly impaling someone on his whirling drill blades, the reveal of the Cygnus crew. But when BOB the robot just fucking gives up and lets himself get pulled into the Black Hole, I had to be hauled, wailing, out of the theater. I didn’t even see the legendary ending.
It never made any sense why Borgnine’s character did that.
Also, in writing that out, realizing that a Borg named Seven-of-Nine is a pretty flat joke.
It wasn’t just Disney. Late 70s was a weird time in entertainment. Movies for kids would be full of swearing and a few exposed breasts or butts. I don’t know what it took to get an “R” back then because our “R” would be their “PG.”
Late ‘70 and ‘80’s education was about the horrors of surviving and rebuilding society after nuclear war. Black Hole was a pleasant diversion.
Absolutely this. I can remember watching a LOT of pretty inappropriate films as a kid in the late 70’s.Then again, everything was sort of smuttier back then. I was re-watching the Love Boat and there are pans on women and men in bathing suits that would make Baywatch blush.
I swear there was a period where the R rating was treated as a suggestion. I saw Apocalypse Now as an unaccompanied 13 year old, and 10 the following year. This was at my local first run theater. They started to crack down later.
That speaks to the faux-victorian values of the 80s more than anything else. We suddenly became ok with gore and really ok with gun violence but anything smacking of sex became a chance to clutch our collective pearls as a nation. 40 yrs later it’s just 100x worse.
Actually, as others have commented, the 80’s were actually more strict with sex because the previous decade was not. Just about every movie had nudity (especially female) and sex in it. Most hot actresses at the time had at least one movie they were nude it, if not several. People started complaining and they started enforcing the ratings more
Well, yeah. The James Bond producers will tell you the UK cencors criticize the violence, while the MPAA freaks out over the sex.
In “E.T.” Elliott calls his brother “penis-breath”
I loved the main giant ship design as a child, and still love it with all my heart today as much as when I first discovered it.I guess you could say I was… down with the Cygnus.-finger guns while moonwalking out the door–finger guns–finger guns-
This is one of the first movies I remember watching (around 6 years old) and wow…it was dark.
I worked at Planet Hollywood Disney World when it first opened, and on the third floor (‘Sci-Fi floor’) Vincent was displayed by one of the booths. I used to geek out over it so hard.
“Disney’s first-ever PG rating” – thank you, Hollywood Squares! This was a question on the show when the movie was coming out – though I still think it was a kind of a cheat that the question was phrased and timed the way it was, since the movie hadn’t been released yet at the time.
There’s a lot of stuff in this thing that doesn’t make a lick of sense, but the one that still bothers me after 42 years is Mimieux communicating with the robot via telepathy.That overture fucking slaps.
It was implyed that she had ESP in general (and that this was a rare but not unheard of skill in their future society). If you accept that robots are really intelligent (and like in Star Wars they seem to be here) then they have just as much a mind to read and talk to as a human would.
But the robot is the only character she communicates with using telepathy, right? Does the robot have ESP?
Why would it need it? Typically if someone has ESP in fiction they can communicate with anyone. You only need it to start the process, not to answer or receive.
Also (I just watched it again), she does use use her powers besides that — she senses that there are 1000 eyes (500 people) aboard the Cygnus which is weird when they only encounter Reinhardt — weird until they know the truth about the crew.
But the robot can also start the process. The robot initiates contact to tell her about the true nature of the crew.
What about the idea that ESP is not the ability to read minds, but is actually the ability of others to project their thoughts?
If that’s the case, the robot definitely has ESP.
But then “Extra Sensory Perception” doesn’t make sense under that moniker no? Perception and Projection are inherently incongruent, no?
Yes, the robot has ESP.i’d say this version of ESP allows natural ESPers to send and receive, or for that ability to be built into AIs, but ESP cannot be induced into non-ESPers.
it’s one of a number of intriguing things the movie brings up and does very little with.Of course, this sort of paranormal stuff was huge in the 2nd half of the 70s. I’m just glad ancient astronauts or astrology wasn’t brought up.
I think in the novelisation it states that her ‘ESP’ is the result of an implant. Of course, the novelisation was written quite independently of the script, and has an entirely different ending among other things.
My mother worked in an administrative role for Disney’s London Office for about 6 months, during which time she attended one (UK) premier, for this. That was about seven years before I was born, but I grew up surrounded by the gift bag goodies from that night, including the soundtrack album and a V.I.N.C.E.N.T. bottle opener.
I actually invested a lot of time following Disney during this era, from ‘75 (“Island at the Top of the World”) through around ‘83 (“Something Wicked This Way Comes,” “Tron”) when Disney was desperately, disastrously trying to revitalize itself. I was especially geeked for “Black Hole” (which had been in pre-production years before “Star Wars”) in large part because it was supposed to be matte painting legend Peter Ellenshaw’s swan song/magnum opus and it teamed him with no less than Ralph McQuarrie. When the teaser trailer first hit, computer graphics were so revolutionary that a simple piece of wire frame animation created a minor sensation. People (moi included) actually paid to see movies we weren’t even interested in because the theaters had advertised they’d be featuring “The Black Hole” trailer. The damn thing ended up being so popular Disney decided to recycle it for the movie’s opening credits.
Needless to say the movie itself was a crushing disappointment, from the monstrously unimaginative script and lackluster cast to the generally disappointing production design and effects. The sole redeeming features were Ellenshaw’s Eiffel Tower-inspired redesign of McQuarrie’s The Cygnus starship and John Barry’s ingratiating score (which has serious limitations yet nonetheless works.) Still, I’ll always have a soft spot for the damn stupid train wreck if only for nostalgia of how excited I was to see it. I’d even go so far as to say I find the studio’s output from this period more enduring than it’s current more seamless production line fare.
Yeah, I mean nothing that came out from Disney during this era was a masterpiece but remains the point in time when Disney actually attempted to try something different and for that, I have a soft spot in my heart.
I feel much the same about the Black Cauldron. Not a good film, and yet, I’d give ANYTHING to see the original cut, before Katzenberg got his mitts on it.
I came here to post almost this exact post (I’d quibble about the Barry score, but only because his peculiar brand of plodding musical pretention renders almost everything ponderous, from this to Dances With Wolves to James Bond). I was even going to bring up The Island at the Top of the World, which I remember almost exclusively from the record and comic book I owned as a kid (I rewatched it as an adult a couple of years ago and it was crazy how I didn’t recognize a single frame of the movie, but could quote it nearly in its entirety from my record player).Were we twins switched at birth?
“renders almost everything ponderous, from this to Dances With Wolves to James Bond”Oh man that Moonraker score goes for some LONG strolls…
Damn, that trailer is for a horror movie.
I too invested a lot of time in that era of disney and saw The Black Hole in the theater as a kid.Yeah, you pretty much nailed it.Also , I think when the AV club should do an article about Never Cry Wolf. It’s not available on disney+, and I suspect it’s because it’s the only disney movie that I know of that has frontal male nudity.
But it remains worth seeking out, if not for its misguided ambition (70mm prints got a stentorian overture from John Barry) then for its time capsule qualities (repeat: 70mm prints got a stentorian overture from John Barry). Yup, and here we are 42 years later, looking nostalgically on when you could just see a movie in a theater… any theater. It’s been years since I saw this, and it was on video. Like a lot of my generation, I grew up accustomed to seeing the Disney VHS tapes in those big, white clambshell cases. But even back then, you knew if it came from the 70’s it would still be Disney but a little, uh, different than what came out when Walt was still around.
Certainly, this was made to cash into the Star Wars craze. And yet, you have to admire how different the mind set at Disney was in those days. Sure, Paramount had some space i.p. ready and waiting to serve up. But Disney decided they should try and whip up their own from scratch. Okay, not totally from scratch: Schell (a criminally underrated actor, IMO) as Reinhardt is clearly channeling James Mason as Nemo (quite successfully, I’d argue – as a kid I don’t think I realized they were different actors). But even in that sense this is a very home made confection. They even did their effects in-house, and they weren’t half bad.
He was great in Judgement at Nuremburg. And he was up against a young Shatner.
Schell is also great in Topkapi, the jewel heist film that inspired every other jewel heist film (it also inspired Bruce Geller to create “Mission: Impossible”).
Is there anything more meta than Maximilian Schell ending up inside of Maximilian’s shell?
Just that it happened in Maximilian’s Hell.
Get out
Who else pretended to be Maximilian with their Capsela set and a cardboard tube?
I saw this in 70mm and yes, that Barry overture is magnificent, as is the entire score. I think and I’ll have to check this, the first movie soundtrack recorded digitally which, like a lot of the film, was absolute state-of-the-art at the time. It’s a very weird, visually terrific pic with a talented cast who really should have been given more to do, and I also recall the furore in some quarters about the PG rating, with some stockholders threatening to pull out unless it was cut to a G, or whatever the equivalent was at the time.
Hey, I was just talking to Harlan on the Internet, and I told him I hadn’t seen a good cyberspace scene like this one since Tron, which is not the film that broke the bank at Disney in 1983, as some believe! No, Tron came out in ‘82, three years after Disney’s The Black Hole, which was movieland’s equivalent to the Hindenburg – what a disaster! And the robots? They made R2-D2 look like Laurence Olivier!
Summon the Huntsman…
If you try to pretend that this movie came out in 1967, it’s a masterpiece.I watch it occasionally and I still can’t believe it came out 2 years after Star Wars, even though I saw it in the theater.
It’s not even in the same galaxy as Forbidden Planet (1956). No pretending required. It’s an actual masterpiece 20 years prior from the Hole.
It definitely feels 1960s. The vibe to me is older Hollywood types not getting what made Star Wars work and turning out a darker version of Lost in Space or something.
Disney must have also tried the Star Wars example on merchandising for this film, because I swear I was still encountering discarded Black Hole ephemera well into the mid 80s. Toys, trading cards, read-along books (the record was usually broken or altogether missing), etc. I never even saw the film until Disney + came out, but from all this leftover material that I encountered, I was vaguely aware of the basic plot points, but some of the darker elements still came as a surprise. The read-along books didn’t mention death-by-propeller, or the literal ending in Hell!
Oh Em GeeThank you for this.This gloriously strange and creepy cornerstone of my childhood will always have a place in my heart.
TBH I don’t get a lot of the criticism of the film. I can only assume that by the time I’d seen it as a kid, enough time had passed between my obsession with Star Wars franchise being nurtured and me consuming every single bit of Sci-Fi I could get my hands on way back when you couldn’t easily get access to time-shifted media on demand.
So while I was hoovering up everything from Dr Who, to Flash Gordon, to Buck Rogers and Battlestar, to Star Trek: TOS, to Terrahawks, to the original Planet of the Apes franchise (and the way this film is presented reminds me a bit of Conquest), I guess my expectations from a Sci Fi film were diverging quite heavily from the fantasy / space opera origins of my fascination with the genre.
I think the comparison to the original SW trilogy’s pretty unfair, given how unable any of the other films in the SW franchise have been to come close to that level of perfection.
I think the film is exceptionally good in a few key areas:
The setting is perfect: The ghost-ship sitting perched on the precipice, full of ominous boding; the irresistibility of the blackhole constantly beaten into you by the blaring score. The ship a microcosm of the blackhole; with the crew slowly being sucked into its mysteries in the same way that the deranged Ahab has been sucked into his obsession.
It’s got some good hard-science-fiction elements and plot-details throughout- even the ESP nonsense was considered less out there in the Seventies (see Uri Gellar getting debunked on the Carson Tonight Show in ‘73; and James Randi’s subsequent book in ‘82) and was a staple of the genre in various forms (Spock > Troi; the Force and sensing things through it; The Tomorrow People, etc, etc).
It’s incredibly atmospheric; from the techno-gothic sets, to the horrific plot-developments. It’s very visually evocative in a way that I don’t think any Sci-Fi has managed to replicate since – which is saying something given how many Nostromo and Sulaco clones have permeated the media and how derivative a lot of spaceship interiors are these days across all franchises.
Put it alongside Star Trek the Motion Picture and I think you can have a fairer comparison; and I’d say that it’s easily on a par with the latter (damning with faint praise?), and I think it’s arguably better paced.
I think in both films, they took the wrong lessons from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is why they have those visually experimental space sequences, but I seem to recall them not being anywhere near as egregious (and considerably shorter and more narratively relevant) as in ST1, or even 2001.
“Scientific” parapsychology really had its heyday in the ‘60s — that’s what the Vulcan “mind meld” grew out of. It was a little past its sell-by date by 1979, but it was at least still a familiar sci-fi trope. It pretty much died out in the ‘80s, except in the more mystico-philosophical form of Star Wars’ “Force”.
Telepathy, telekinesis and other mental powers were fairly popular in SF of the period. Even Larry Niven, typically thought of as a hard SF writer, had Gil Hamilton (who had a telekinetic right ‘arm’ after he lost his meat limb) and the Slaver empire (based on their ability to control the minds of other races).
It was almost all down to one science fiction editor named John W. Campbell (editor of Astounding Science Fiction). Best way to get him to buy a story: include ESP. Best way to keep him from buying a story: don’t have any ESP. He had a lot of pull in the field so everyone tried to make him happy in hopes of selling something to Astounding.
The “John W. Campbell Best New Writer” Hugo award was named for him, until it was changed to the “Astounding Best New Writer” after 2019, because he was also a fascist and people were sick of him being honored by having an award named for him.
Another thing that’s fantastic is Chekhov’s hole spinning away in the background of basically every scene once they get to the Cygnus.
I admit it, the viewmaster reel was way better than the movie. But both were unsettling. The ship’s organic red grow, the rolling meteorite, the, well, cybermen. And that somewhat novel ‘black hole’ concept that ends unsatisfyingly unresolved. Awesome design, perfect for 3D pictures that leave the story to your imagination.And these twin barrel space guns were the best ever, on a par with Space1999 and Ulysses31 weapon designs.Now, it’s not easy to take seriously. Black holes are more familiar, their effects less mysterious. The goofy big eyed robots were and still are a bit out of place in that movie (very weirdly cartoonish design, and, as Silent Running demonstrated, not required for empathy). And for some reason, I’m startled whenever Maximilian Schell doesn’t say derek. But it still rates very, very high among “the films I really wish to love”.
Those over-under blasters were tits, and may have inspired Starlord’s guns in Guardians of the Galaxy.
I’ve been expecting the Ulysses31 combined lightsaber/blaster to appear in Star Wars for the last forty odd years, and still consider it to be just a matter of time.
You time came. Google “Star Wars Rebels Ezra Lightsaber”
So, which Star Wars reaction film is objectively worse: The Black Hole, or Moonraker?
What!?
Moonraker is awesome. If only for the zero gravity sequences of people tiptoing while flailing their arms in slow motion (while extras slowly jump on trampolines in the background). It’s so… relatable. Plus, it’s full of Moore (rip) and full of Lonsdale (rip).
The real question is : which Barry soundtrack is the best.
A master class in GIF use, bravo.
Supposedly terrible movies from the 70’s have amazing scores. Today’s Oscar-winning scores sound like elevator music.
Moonraker might be my favorite JB movie, give or take a couple misplaced reaction shots and needle drops. Lonsdale getsa couple truly classsic quips.TBH score brings out the dread and grandeur, while MR just seems sluggish at times (but we’re still waiting for the complete score to be released on CD). Still, the launch and flight to Drax’s station is classic.
Moonraker, which is terrible. I actually really like The Black Hole, having seen it for the first time about a fortnight ago.
I can see how lame Moonraker is now but I was certainly more entertained by it at the time
The Black Hole was a valiant attempt but it missed the mark. Its look always struck me as an elaborately produced episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Even today, 2001: A Space Odyssey doesn’t look like a 55-year-old film and Star Wars: Episode IV doesn’t look like a 44-year-old one. By comparison, The Black Hole really comes across as a relic from the ‘60s made with ‘70s technology. It looks good for its time but it is not timeless.**NOTE—Kubrik only edited his film once after its initial release. He cut it down from 168 minutes to 144 minutes after showing it in New York, L.A. and Boston.****NOTE—Lucas hasn’t been able to keep his hands off Star Wars. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s tweaked it over the years.**
**NOTE—Lucas hasn’t been able to keep his hands off Star Wars. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s tweaked it over the years.**I’m at the point where I won’t watch any version other than 4K77. I’m conflicted about it; on one hand, Lucas, as its creator, had the right to tweak and change it as he saw fit, and to consider his re-done CGI-fests the definitive versions and market them as such.But I’m always cheesed by his insistence that the original theatrical release was a “workprint.” That was the version that I and a lot of people saw as kids and captured our imaginations, and he’s basically crapping on it saying that it was just a work in progress, invalidating our enjoyment of it because it was – according to him – inferior.
Fuck Lucas. I love the boot version going around where they have the original 70’s tint and everything.
There are actually two versions of 4K77, one without DNR that preserves more or less the same color temperature and one with DNR that has a slightly cooler hue. Both are great.
Thanks! I gotta try to get both and compare.
Here are two screenshots from a random part of the movie:Sorry about the subtitles, I didn’t realize VLC included those in the capture.
That’s freaking amazing. I think I prefer the top one with a more faded look to it, but I also love the 70’s and that look from film so it’s probably just preference.
I kind of go back and forth. It’s pretty awesome that they made both versions. And now that I’ve gone back and looked, they’ve also made a DNR version of RoTJ! I’ll have to get that one, for completeness sake.They still haven’t come out with a theatrical version of ESB, because of the dearth of quality prints they can use to create it. They’re working on it, but it’s a much more involved process.
Here’s ROTJ:
I totally agree with you on that one.Film is a director’s medium, and as such it’s the director’s prerogative to decide what ends up on the screen. That said, I think once the product is out there it’s more or less static and should be left alone. In a similar vein, Picasso didn’t go back and tweak Les Demoiselles d’Avignon once it was in the gallery. He did all his editing in his studio at Le Bateau-Lavoir before the public ever saw it. He had already moved on to other projects by the time the painting was out in the world.Kubrick’s decision to cut the length of 2001 was driven by audience reaction after those first few screenings. The consensus was that it was too long, so he tightened it up for wider release. He didn’t add new content. He simply cut out a few scenes that weren’t essential to telling the story—mundane stuff like Bowman moving around the ship, more spacewalks and Poole getting more exercise. While it would be interesting to see that first cut—which was 160 minutes, not 168 as I mentioned earlier—I don’t feel like it would somehow change the narrative.I can understand Lucas wanting to take advantage of advancing technology, but I don’t think all the edits he’s done to Star Wars have added anything to the first version of the film I watched as a kid. He could have simply showcased all that ILM technology in the later films in the series. Also, all the retconning over the years to make the overall narrative work is annoying.
Another aspect is that the non-effects rejiggering flies in the face of the contributions of the people who rescued the film by fixing the Jympson/Lucas cut in the edit. Like, aside from how ropey the Special Edition CGI was, adding the Jabba scene back in accomplishes nothing but slowing down the plot and restating what we already had in a better scene with Greedo in the cantina, for example.I’ve always felt like his single-minded obsession with erasing the original version (rather than just releasing a “director’s cut” as a separate entity like everybody else) was rooted in the fact that Marcia Lucas had such a strong hand in that version, especially in the edit. I figured that he might have also resented the attention and praise Richard Chew and Paul Hirsch got for their contributions and wanted to make a “definitive” version that only he would get credit for.I always liked this video talking about what was actually a rough cut, and all the efforts made by people who weren’t George Lucas to fix it.
And they all said Kubrick was a control freak. Lucas takes it to the next level.
You nailed it on the Marcia Lucas part.
Tron was not the film that broke the bank at Disney in 1983, as some believe. No, Tron came out in ‘82, three years after Disney’s The Black Hole, which was movieland’s equivalent to the Hindenburg
– what a disaster! And the robots? They made R2-D2 look like Laurence
Olivier!So anyway, back to 1983 at Disney: their big film that
bombed in ‘83 wasn’t Tron, it was Something Wicked This Way Comes,
which is actually pretty fun, but it comes across too soft – and it
lost a fortune! Anyway, that brought about the arrival of Eisner and
Katzenberg.
My first time seeing this movie was on an old black and white TV I discovered in my grandparents’ basement when I was a kid. I was surprised it still powered on, and some TV station was in the middle of airing this film.I actually thought the movie looked better in black and white. I think it’s because of all that 70’s-style harsh stage lighting.
This has bothered me for a long time:WHY AREN’T THERE MORE MOVIES MADE ABOUT BLACK HOLES?!The infinite curvature of spacetime at a singularity, the inescapability of the event horizon, and the strange effects of time dilation don’t seem to excite the imaginations of screenwriters as much as I’d expect. “Event Horizon” doesn’t count, and “Interstellar” botched it. You’re experiencing enough force to dilate time but walking around isn’t a problem?
/rant
“The Black Hole” isn’t a terrific movie, but at least it realized some of the potential of this fascinating topic.
Kip Thorne would disagree with you re: Interstellar.
My favorite semi-nonsense black hole science is the Doctor Who episode where there’s an extremely large spaceship trapped in orbit around a black hole, so different decks of the spaceship experience different degrees of time dilation, allowing the Doctor and companions to age at radically different rates as they travel the ship. (It wouldn’t work because the differential rotation/tidal forces would tear the ship apart instantly, but it’s really cool.)My least favorite nonsense black hole science is the Doctor Who episode where they go to a planet orbiting a black hole and SATAN is trapped there for some reason.
But on a fantasy level, the idea of using a black hole to imprison Satan is fucking awesome
In my experiences, I’ve enter a lot of black holes; and they all led to Heaven.
I once found a Trivial Pursuit card that had a wrong answer; it said the killer robot was Vincent, not Maximilian. I was about 10 and wrote them a letter, they said they would correct it, and send me a little pack of cards from different sets.
Let’s give some credit for a little bit of sci-fi detail. Outer space is likely wicked dark. Notice that you can’t really see the outside of the Cygnus. You only see the light emitting from it.
Thank you for dredging up WATCHER IN THE WOODS. That film made me scared of groups of trees (even really small ones in front gardens) for a veerryyy long time.
This is the first movie I ever saw in a theatre; I was five. The ending has been lost in the steel trap of my memory, but I do remember being totally mesmerized when they showed the black hole. To this day, black holes amaze and intrigue me.
Pretty sure I re-enacted the scene with the meteor crashing down the center of the Cygnus and our protagonists in silhouette stumbling across a catwalk in front of it *only* a few thousand times with whatever Star Wars actions figures were handy. Was that some sort of predictive corporate synergy on my part?It’s not a terrible movie.
“A journey that begins where everything ends (including that movie).”I can’t decide whether we were warned or mislead.
This movie has probably been on my to-watch movie the longest, basically my whole life. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t disappointing, either. Shockingly dark, great visuals. I absolutely love the view of the control tower as they’re first approaching it.
I watched Event Horizon not long before this. That is pretty much the dark(er)-and-gritty remake.
Ernest Borgnine is hilariously bad in this. Most of the time it’s like he’s reciting his lines as practice while waiting in line at the grocery store.
I saw this during a period when my parents tried to get me interested in any Star Wars type movie including things like Battle Beyond the Stars. I was a very discerning 8 year old and wasn’t interested in “fake” Star Wars stuff, I wanted the real thing. Also, as a kid who’d been exposed to Psycho, I was fascinated that Norman Bates was in a different movie!I need to re-watch this as an adult and see what I think now.
Anyone here remember Image Works, the interactive games and exhibits that formerly occupied the second floor of Journey Into Imagination at Epcot? There was an activity that would insert you into a movie scene using very primitive green screen technology. Only after finally watching The Black Hole on Disney+ last year did I realize that the “escape from a collasping space ship” scenario at this attraction was footage of the destruction of the Cygnus, including the scene with that rolling ball of fire.
I saw this at 10 and then again at 51 and I can tell you I loved it as a kid even had the action figures. Wow this movie has cheesy special effects even for then and feels totally 1970s crappy sci fi.
Rewatching now, because my curiosity has been piqued. And it’s just bad. Terrible, prosaic, mundane dialogue! Woodenly delivered! By disengaged actors! OTOH, Ernest Borgnine just bellowed “ARE YOU ABLE TO SPEAK!!!” into the faceplate of a mute robot, so…not a waste.
Yes, also just rewatched, and damn it was bad. I had high hopes of appreciating it better than the first time, but it was the opposite. Oh the clashing genres, gothic horror (yes, they should have cast Vincent Price) and mickey mouse robots. The super humanization of robots (the shooting contests, the humans ready to sacrifice their lives to save a toaster, the poetic goring of maximilian with its screams of pain). The battle scenes with their slow tunes and slow action, and nonsensical aiming. That kid who just saw star wars and wishes he played in a space western (yeehaa pew pew). The nonsensical relationship between Schell and Perkins (“go monitor me from your spaceship but stay here and bring these documents to Earth while you accompany me in the black hole”). The physics, with people running, yelling and breathing in a roof-less, half destroyed spaceship, and the random gravitational pull of the black hole. And the black hole science itself.It was heartbreakingly cringey. Oh Borgnine dear Borgnine. I know your contract forced you to play in every each movie ever made during half a century, but couldn’t you have pretended you broke your leg instead of doing that one ? Or did you try and fail to convince anyone ?
So pedestrian…it didn’t even have the sense to linger on the images which deserved it. And Roddy McDowell’s voice, jabbering away like a third-rate C-3PO…
I’ve been saying for years that this ought to be Disney’s first live-action-to-animation remake.
I remember playing on my swingset in my backyard as a kid, my friends from the neighborhood choosing which characters we were from our favorite sci-fi movies and TV shows we were going to pretend to be for that day’s adventure. Kids fought over who was going to be Han Solo, the loser taking Buck Rogers or Starbuck, an older kid might’ve picked Captain Kirk. Then Brian Dall, who had recently moved in says, “I’ll be Maximillian… You know, from the Black Hole.” and we all stared at him, like who invited this kid?
This movie is a forgotten classic. I have never seen a movie look like a cheesy 1960’s B movie throwback that is so dark. Before or since. I do not think they would even go near this now in 2021. The entire plot of this is bonkers. A murdering robot, lobotomized slaves and a black hole that sends people to hell. This movie actually kind of was the forerunner of bonkers 1980’s fare like Highlander, which should be absurd but was freakin awesome. They definitely took way more chances back then with sci-fi ideas.
I saw this after Star Wars so i was really pumped. Really wasn’t impressed with the R2-D2 knock offs but the ending just blew me away. Seen it about 10 times now and it gets better every time. There is a making-of doco that really shows how seat of the pants this film was.
Unfortunately, I’m a bit late to the party but for anyone still around, this is a great interview with many of the cast and a wealth of background detail including about an alternate ending that filming in the Sistine Chapel was allowed but then not used as considered a bit OTT.https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/heat-vision/we-never-had-an-ending-why-disneys-black-hole-lost-star-wars-1262526
Dude on the left looks a lot like John Boehner.
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The craziest part is that half that movie’s backgrounds consisted of over 150 hand painted scenes – including the meteor bridge scene – all by ONE guy. Peter Ellenshaw.
https://www.academymuseum.org/en/collection/collection-highlights/peter-ellenshaw-matte-painting-spartacus
This was the first movie I made my family watch when Disney+ came out, and I have no regrets.
Four words: Man on robot sex. Two more: In hell.
Also, let’s not forget mind-trippy creepy-ass Something Wicked This Way Comes with all those other movies.
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